Semiologic » artificial intelligence

'Baby' robot learns like a human

Denis — Sun, 07 May 2006 11:17:03 +0000

Cute — Babybot's "brain" is a cluster of 20 computers running neural networks meant to mimic a biological neural system and learn in a similar way.

Photo credits: LIRA-Lab, University of Genoa, Italy

One video (avi format) shows the robot experimenting with a rubber duck, while another clip shows Babybot examining a ball.

Via New Scientist.

Play it again, brain, but in reverse

Denis — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 16:10:23 +0000

Interesting — Researchers David Foster and Matthew Wilson of the MIT have highlighted that rat brain cells signal in reverse immediately after the animal completes a task.

They suggest that the reverse signaling etches information into the brains of the rats as part of the learning process. Interestingly, they also hint that resting while awake can have benefits for learning and memory too.

How the mind senses movement

Denis — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 14:43:17 +0000

Interesting — Simon Gandevia, of the Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute in Sydney, Australia, and his team have devised a technique which clearly demonstrates that the brain only has to send a command to a limb to create the sensation of movement.

Who owns XML?

Denis — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 05:06:51 +0000

Interesting — Who owns XML?, by Wade Roush.

Barking mad for Nintendogs

Denis — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 16:23:33 +0000

Highlight — Nintendogs is a virtual-pet game for the Nintendo DS, along the lines of the Tamagotchi:

You'll have to check in on your puppy every day, making sure it gets food, water and exercise.

If you forget to do this, you might turn the game on to find a dirty, flea-ridden, hungry, sullen dog waiting for you. Or not: Severely neglected pooches can run away. If you know you're going to be away for a while, the dog can be checked into a puppy hotel where it will be fed and cared for in your absence.

Musings from a Mouse

Denis — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 16:37:12 +0000

Highlight — Musings from a Mouse.

IQ test for AI devices gets experts thinking

Denis — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 16:42:14 +0000

Intriguing — IQ test for AI devices gets experts thinking.

Remote-controlled humans

Denis — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 03:32:26 +0000

Creepy — Remote-controlled humans:

When a weak DC current is delivered to the mastoid behind your ear, your body responds by shifting your balance toward the anode. The stronger the current, the more powerful its pull. If it is strong enough, it not only throws you off balance but alters the course of your movement.

The researchers' main interest, in the end, is apparently gaming — as in giving you the very feelings that you are simulating in, say, a shoot-the-up game.

Via Nova Spivacks.

Unsupervised learning of natural languages

Denis — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 17:53:38 +0000

Highlight — The ADIOS project (automatic distillation of structures) addresses the problem of using corpora of raw symbolic sequential data to infer underlying rules that govern their production. In short, feed it a piece of text, in any language, and the program analyses its structure and can then produce new, meaningful sentences.

It is being developed by researchers at Cornell University in New York and Tel Aviv University in Israel.

Via New Scientist.

Yahoo!'s audio search

Denis — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 04:07:58 +0000

Thought — Yahoo! debuts audio search. Yawn, boring news.

And irrelevant service, in a way. I mean, sure, if you need to find Britney Spears' Toxic song in the disc store, the best way to do so is to enter Britney Spears Toxic in the search box. But in this case, you don't really need the search engine because you already know what you're looking for.

What I would want to see as a consumer is something like: I sing or hum the music in the micro — because I don't know the title, and possibly not even the author — and the engine returns the top 10 most relevant matches. Now that would be search. Contact me if you are interested in starting this with me.